Chapter 12

The next day was the opening ceremony.

Burning incense, offering prayers, listening to the rites. The entertainment industry is the most superstitious place there is.

Zhong Qing probably didn’t believe in any of it, but she raised her hands in a gesture that carried a hint of when-in-Rome, running through the motions with indifference. The long incense stick hadn’t even finished catching before she was gone.

Zhou Siyou was even more perfunctory than her.

She took off her sunglasses, didn’t even touch the incense, pressed her palms together with a smile, eyes wide open.

Compared to the director and lead actress who fobbed off the “gods” like this, the most devout worshipper on set was the big boss of the production’s investment company.

He was a plump middle-aged man dressed in black, Buddhist beads strung around his wrist. Nearly bowing every three steps, he would glance at the red tablet of Lord Guan, then gaze past the ceremony toward the church behind it, desolate yet resplendent.

His lips moved in constant murmuring, half a phrase of “Buddha” here, half a phrase of “Jesus” there.

East and West, combined in perfect harmony.

Zhou Siyou stood behind him, putting her sunglasses back on, her slightly curled hair loose in the morning wind.

The truth was, Zhou Siyou knew this man. Li Yin, the head of Wanhe Media, and Yu Ning’s husband on the side.

Zhou Siyou’s impression of him was terrible. Seeing him so devout now, she tentatively concluded that he’d simply done too many things with a guilty conscience, which was why he was so superstitious.

Half an hour later, the ceremony wrapped and the crew clamored for a group photo. In front of the church, the director and the leads stood front and center.

On either side of Zhou Siyou were Zhong Qing, and Zheng Su, the male lead, who played Yuan Qinghua, Jiang Jin’s late husband in the film.

The two of them exchanged a friendly greeting, then said nothing more. Watching everyone standing beneath the church, heads bowed and still, Zhou Siyou copied their posture, lowering her eyes and quieting her mind, as if at morning prayer.

Her talent agent, Fang Ming, suddenly bumped her shoulder. “Take off the sunglasses.” Then she added as a joke, “Careful, or the gods will punish you.”

Zhou Siyou didn’t turn around, only said, “It’s fine.”

The sunglasses hid most of her face, but the half-smile on her lips was unmistakable.

“The Virgin Mary will forgive me.”

That was a line from the script.

And so it was that Zhou Siyou’s teasing words fell at that exact moment.

The morning shadows shifted, and the sunlight suddenly slanted. The church’s stained-glass windows glowed, brilliant and translucent, seeming to bloom with endless radiance, throwing the barren mountains behind into shadow.

The wind gathered itself, and the barren hills became mere ash in the backdrop.

Within the ash lay death, and rebirth too.

From somewhere in the crowd came a small gasp.

“Look, on the mountain behind us,” someone said. “There’s a rainbow.”

After the table read, night fell, and filming officially began.

The movie ran on twin timelines, interwoven with scattered memories. Zhou Siyou moved through these memory scenes again and again.

Tonight’s shoot took place in the studio hall. Jiang Jin played the black and white keys to her heart’s content, and amid the roar of applause, Yuan Qinghua stood below the stage, his face blurred.

Jiang Jin’s gaze swept across the crowd, brushing past her husband’s indistinct features.

Then looked straight into the camera.

The emotion here was the heart of the performance.

That piano recital in the hall, Jiang Jin’s proud and triumphant smile, eventually became a yellowed photograph on a music box.

In the couple’s home, light and shadow flickered under the warm lamp. The wooden music box spun without stop, and then became dough spinning in the oven.

This was also the film’s very first portrait of the heroine’s marriage, presented at its opening.

The smile was frozen, gone yellow. The lively music was trapped inside an oven.

Closing the script, Zhou Siyou let out a breath and sat down at the piano.

The cinematographer and director signaled each other, and the camera on its track began to move.

Zhou Siyou played the “Turkish March.”

It was an extremely lively piece, every note brimming with vitality.

Her fingers flew across the keys, faster and faster, fast enough to break through the black and white barrier.

Until the very last second, Jiang Jin held her emotions at full strength, so deep in her eyes they became tiny points of light, while fine beads of sweat gathered at her temples.

Thunderous applause rose from below the stage.

Jiang Jin rose and bowed, smiling brightly at the crowd.

Only when her eyes met Yuan Qinghua’s.

Jiang Jin’s gaze narrowed almost imperceptibly, then slid gently away.

The music was beautiful. She wasn’t about to let anyone spoil it.

“Pass on the first take. A great way to start.”

Only after Zhong Qing, who had been frowning at the monitor for a full half minute, said these words did the crew, which had been braced for battle, finally relax.

“We’re only shooting this one take tonight, everyone take some time to get familiar with the set,” Zhong Qing said. “That’s a wrap. Thanks for the hard work, everyone.”

The staff checked the sky, checked the ground, then checked their phones. It was still early.

“Wrapping this early?” someone murmured.

“What’s wrong with early?” Someone else pulled her along to stow the equipment, saying with a laugh, “She studied abroad. None of that ninety-nine-six nonsense for her.”

As the staff chattered, Zhou Siyou kept her eyes fixed on Little Director Zhong below the stage. She had just been about to go over for a word when, the moment she stepped off the stage, another person sidled up grinning.

It was Zheng Su, the actor playing the male lead Yuan Qinghua.

He was around thirty-five, diligent about his skincare, reasonably famous, and his acting was solid.

He gave Zhou Siyou a friendly smile, an opening for conversation. “I thought my character was only a victim. I didn’t expect him to be a villain too.”

“A victim?” Zhou Siyou laughed out loud. “Anyone who read the character backgrounds would get it. What kind of decent person preys on his own student?”

Her tone dripped with mockery, and the way she spoke was downright unfriendly, positively rude.

Not a shred of awareness that she was talking to a co-star.

Any normal person would have gotten angry by now, let alone a man who hid a glass heart behind macho pride.

Zheng Su paused for a moment, then asked back, “Why couldn’t he be?”

“I… huh?”

Zhou Siyou’s eyes went round, as if swallowing down a curse, and she turned at once to the crew with great seriousness. “Who cast this male character? Was it Zhong Qing?”

Zheng Su hurried to walk back his words. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, Teacher Little Zhou, I was joking!”

Zhou Siyou smiled without warmth. “That’s quite a crime of a joke.”

She did hold a bit of a grudge against the man in front of her.

If her eyes had stayed properly locked on Little Director Zhong, she wouldn’t have lost track of her in the first place. With this man messing things up, everything had scattered.

Looking at the sea of heads packed inside the hall, Zhou Siyou didn’t even know who to look for anymore.

She frowned in irritation, then gave up entirely and stopped searching.

At the moment, Zhou Siyou was still wearing Jiang Jin’s recital gown, a simple off-white top, black suit trousers, and teal-brown high-tops that made her practically glide as she walked.

Seeing her head toward the guesthouse, Zheng Su hurried to catch up. They were co-stars after all, and he was the senior one, with better acting chops than her. Thinking of the several scenes they’d share later, Zhou Siyou felt a little unsure of herself too.

Along the way, they actually managed to exchange a few words.

Zheng Su asked her, “Teacher Little Zhou, there’s something I’ve been dying to ask you. During the screen test, that line you improvised, what were you thinking?”

All the screen tests had been recorded, and since they were going to be working together, Zheng Su had naturally watched the selected actors’ footage over and over.

Zhou Siyou only said, “Back when it was teacher and student, every word out of Yuan Qinghua’s mouth to Jiang Jin sounded like praise but was really a put-down. Some people might genuinely get brainwashed by that, but others naturally find it disgusting. I’d rather Jiang Jin be the latter.”

“And after he became paralyzed from the waist down, Yuan Qinghua became the one in the lesser position. It’s only natural Jiang Jin would say a few words that sound encouraging but are really cold mockery.”

Zhou Siyou finished, speaking at rapid fire.

Before he could open his mouth again, she stopped in front of the guesthouse door, hand on the handle. “Anything else you want to ask?”

“…My read on the character seems to differ from yours a bit,” Zheng Su said.

What’s your read? What’s mine?

A normal person would have asked that.

But Zhou Siyou never played by the rules. She neither humbly sought guidance nor held forth with direction, only said, “Buddy, we’ve already started shooting, and you’re telling me this now?”

Zheng Su smiled awkwardly.

Before going inside, Zhou Siyou finally added one more line. “Anyway, as long as you treat your own love as something noble, and then, like most men, give Jiang Jin that whole ‘I do this to you because I love you, so don’t be ungrateful’ attitude, you’ll be about right.”

With that, Zhou Siyou went through the door and shut it with a snap.

Leaving her co-star standing outside in disarray.

Inside the guesthouse, Zhou Siyou climbed the spiral staircase. In the second-floor living room, several supporting actors were gathered around playing bridge.

A spread of drinks sat on the round table, and a few sharp-eyed ones spotted Zhou Siyou and waved her over to sit.

Ji Mingxin pulled out a chair for her. “Your seat, Miss Zhou.”

Zhou Siyou accepted the courtesy with a smile and sat, though her eyes kept darting toward the stairwell.

“Sister Siyou,” someone at the card table asked her, “want to play? This round’s almost over, we’ll add you in next.”

Zhou Siyou shook her head absently.

Ji Mingxin gave a cry. “Miss Zhou’s card skills are hopeless. If she really played with a pack of old sharks like you, she’d be eating plain rice for the next few months.”

The others laughed, cards in hand.

“Fine, fine. Deal us in again.”

The sound of shuffling filled their ears. A few of them exchanged glances, all thinking the same thing: Ji Mingxin, the clueless one, and Zhou Siyou, the one with the terrible temper. Somehow they got along. Strange.

Everyone in the industry knew Ji Mingxin came from money, a rich second-generation kid experiencing show business for fun. Whether it was endorsements or variety shows, she approached it all as a leisure activity.

In this film, for instance, she only played a trainee police officer. Her role only grew after the suspect in the church case was interrogated in the later stages of filming.

For the first several months she had no scenes at all, yet she’d still shown up on set early, and even turned down a scheduled variety show, all under the pretense of joining the production early to soak up Little Director Zhong’s brilliance.

Soak up her brilliance? In the end, she just holed up in the guesthouse playing cards and mahjong.

Round after round, Ji Mingxin played with increasing enthusiasm, while Zhou Siyou leaned back in her chair, already yawning.

Yawning nonstop.

Compared to Zhou Siyou, the textbook “don’t get it, can’t play, don’t ask me” type, Ji Mingxin’s card skills really were good.

Not only did she win round after round, but seeing Zhou Siyou bored out of her mind, she could still spare attention to make small talk with her.

“Sister Siyou, while you all were shooting the night scenes, I explored every floor of this guesthouse. Your pick of the third floor is really good, you know? The lower floors aren’t just damp, they’ve got worms, and…”

“And what?”

Zhou Siyou pressed her for it, only to notice that around the card table, everyone except Ji Mingxin was looking rather uncomfortable.

But Ji Mingxin was laughing heartily.

After a few loud guffaws, she gathered up her cards, looked at Zhou Siyou, and said with a grin, “Three dead mice, that’s what!!”

“Dead…”

Dead mice?

Zhou Siyou’s face darkened.

Just hearing those three words was enough to make her stomach turn.

Catching her expression, then glancing at the speechless looks on her fellow card players’ faces, Ji Mingxin froze. “Was I… not supposed to laugh?”

Zhou Siyou looked at her, three big words written in her eyes: What do you think?

As Zhou Siyou rolled her eyes in exasperation and Ji Mingxin stood there dumbly, the girl beside them raised a hand and stepped in to smooth things over.

“Come to think of it, since there are mice here,” she said, shuffling cards at lightning speed, “shouldn’t we get a cat?”

Ji Mingxin let out a breath of relief and scrambled down off the ledge. “Right, right, let’s get a cat,” she said. “Does anyone here have a cat?”

They all shook their heads.

“Way too hard. Looking after myself is a struggle already. Where would I find the money or energy for a kitten?”

“Exactly, they’re a huge hassle… hey.”

As she spoke, she slapped down a card, then smacked her own forehead as something dawned on her. She looked at Zhou Siyou and Ji Mingxin. “Remember? Sister Siyou and Little Ji’s first meeting, that variety show deep in the mountains…”

At the words, Zhou Siyou gave a light nod but didn’t say much more.

The show they meant was a charity variety program, the kind that hauled a batch of celebrities into the mountains for a stretch of time to do tasks helping farmers and casually sell their fruit for them.

At the time, Zhou Siyou was a fresh face with no real work to her name, her only asset a pretty face. Ji Mingxin, on the other hand, had just come off a smash-hit survival show and was at the height of her popularity.

All you can say is that idol fans really know how to spin things every which way and ship couples. Zhou Siyou had only sat next to Ji Mingxin on the tour bus and exchanged a few words with her, and by that very night, a fan community for “Chengwu Youxin” had already been created.

According to Ji Mingxin herself, most of it was orchestrated by professional fan accounts. Her company felt the dominant ship within her idol group was draining too many resources, and considering her future path as an actress, they’d spotted a business opportunity and manufactured an outside-the-group pairing for her.

But that’s a story for later.

What truly built their friendship was a different matter entirely, one that happened on the show.

Outside the orchard ran a road, constantly rumbling with heavy trucks.

A young wildcat’s hind legs had been run over by a passing car, and it was still struggling when found. The nearest town had no animal hospital, and the clinics had long since closed.

Ji Mingxin found it, asked the production team for a first-aid kit, and did what she could.

She was just about to go pick fruit from the orchard to feed the little cat when the production team suggested she bring one more person along.

Perhaps, in the moment Ji Mingxin knocked on Zhou Siyou’s door with the cat in her arms, there really was some ship-fueling intent behind it.

But half a minute later, when Zhou Siyou opened the door, everything went somewhere entirely unexpected.

The instant her eyes landed on the cat, Zhou Siyou began trembling uncontrollably.

Realizing a camera was following behind Ji Mingxin, she lifted her head with a face like slate, shaking it with a hint of apology, but when she opened her mouth, she couldn’t manage a single complete sentence.

The bang of the door was Zhou Siyou shutting it with shaking hands.

“…What’s wrong with her?” Ji Mingxin stood frozen at the doorway for a moment.

The staff only asked her, “Should we cut this part?”

Ji Mingxin nodded.

Before long, she’d settled the cat somewhere safe, but still uneasy, she knocked on Zhou Siyou’s door again. “Sister Siyou… are you all right?”

“What else do you want?”

Through the crack in the door, the young woman who normally wore a gloomy, don’t-mess-with-me face was now pale as paper.

Her tone was still sharp as ever.

Ji Mingxin’s instincts told her this wasn’t just a fear of cats, or some phobia of furry things.

It was more like Zhou Siyou had seen something else entirely through that injured little cat.

Seen what, though?

But Zhou Siyou’s state that night clearly wasn’t right for further questions. After offering her apologies, Ji Mingxin bowed to her at a full ninety degrees and left behind a pile of peace offerings.

Over the following days, the production team found a proper veterinarian who stayed with the cat until it recovered.

Only after the little wildcat was back on its feet did Ji Mingxin and Zhou Siyou finally grow close. Playing with the bouncing little wildcat, Zhou Siyou was clearly having a wonderful time herself.

Ji Mingxin was still curious, though, and eventually worked up the nerve to ask why she’d looked so troubled that night.

Zhou Siyou sighed.

“…I used to have a cat too. Together with my best friend,” she said quietly. “Then there was an accident, and the cat died. When it died… it was in a similar state to the wildcat you were carrying back then.”

With that, Zhou Siyou gave a shrug, her face light and unbothered, as if she’d long since made peace with it.

“Oh, I see.” Ji Mingxin, tactful enough, asked nothing more.

What Zhou Siyou certainly never told her was that such “peace” was nothing but a disguise.

She would never, in her whole life, forget the scene from back then.

A freezing winter night, scattered rain, a dying life on the flagstone path of the garden.

That little cat, secretly raised together with Zhong Qing, had been smashed to death by her mother, the one with the mental illness.

Right in front of her and Zhong Qing both.